Hi again all. I've recently sent in a letter to PCPlus magazine. It was sparked by
the original article by Alex Cox, (in PCP #283) and then it's response
by a reader in PCPlus (#285).

(To paraphrase, Alex waxed lyrical about the demo scene of the late 80''s
and early 90's. (Alex being an Atari user). And then the subsequent
response from a former Amiga sceen'er. (Who was a little bit put out by
the apparent lack of any kind of mention of the Amiga and it's contribution
to the demo scene).

I was wondering what anyone else thought, (as we have quite a few old
Amiga fans in here as it is).

-- My letter sent into PC Plus =

Amiga - Old flame wars part 2

After a recent letter in PC Plus magazine (#285), It re-occured to me that
the Amiga never really gets its due, (in respect to the contribution it made
to the computer scene as a whole).

It was sparked by a reader called Nik, who was a little irked by the
offending article in PCP #283, and its apparent bias in regard to the
demo scene. Whilst I agree with the author Alex Cox (in that, he was an
ST user and that he was talking about his memories of "his" scene).
I'm talking about a much more general perception.

The Amiga was a HUGE success (particularly in the UK, Germany, and
the USA).

If it wasn't for the disastrous managerial decisions, the Amiga could have
been a serious contender for the dominant home desktop OS.

And of course Aminet (at the time, it was THE LARGEST collection of
software for ANY platform in the world!)

And in particular the ease of use of the OS (Workbench). The ability to
configure almost anything about the machine. TRUE multitasking! Years
before the PC got anywhere close to it. The multimedia capabilities were
again, far in advance of the PC at the time.

C'mon, an entire OS running from 1 floppy disk! I remember running a 1MB A-500+,
and having a whopping 800k of free ram for games, apps, ect.

(I know these have been rolled out before but...Amiga's were used to
create the GFX for Babylon 5, Jurassic Park, Seaquest DSV, amongst
others. They were also used in NASA, and to control some of the rides at
Disney, and were used in other prestigious organisations.

Then there's the Amiga scene itself (not just the demo scene, but the
whole Amiga computer scene). The diskmags (grapevine was a firm
favourite). Anyone remember mail trading, or the vast collection of PD
and shareware software for just a few quid.

So how about an article, to redresses the balance? Orestis Bastounis (we're looking at you).

Thanks in advance.

-- End of letter.

So what does everyone else think? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts
and opinions.

You may do with this as you please, even forward to that forum if you wish...
Let`s face it the Atari crowd haven`t got anything similar...

Enjoy...

Ode to the AMIGA.

Twenty years ago, almost to the day,
A new breed of computer was about to come our way,
Known as the A1000 it took us all by storm,
Using mouse and GUI, it soon became the norm.

At first it didn't do much, until we got it tamed,
Then all of a sudden, the graphics modes were famed,
HAM images of a little girl, (of which I have a file),
NTSC "Lores" and beat the competition by a mile.

There was stereophonic sound coming from the ports,
When listening from an amplifier, what must have been our thoughts,
This audio was a sample, or a generated sound,
Even speech was heard, and on no other machine could be found.

There was a 32 bit processor, known as the sixty eight K,
It ran at 7 mega-hertz, and we all went, oooh... weh heh,
Its memory range was small, but more than enough for us,
It could boot into a GUI from floppy without a fuss.

Custom chips were used in this machine, to do any difficult task,
Affectionate girly names were given, so what were they? you might ask,
Agnus, Paula and Denise were the three that did their best,
To give us hours of pleasure, be-it games, drawing and the rest.

Other chips were used also, to talk to the world outside,
Bi-directional parallel port and analogue games port to deride
All of the opposition which could barely look one way,
Outgoing or Incoming, not BOTH like those MIGGYs of the day.

Soon it became apparent just how powerful it was to be,
So out came the A500 with up to Workbench one point three,
Much smaller and much better and also had a proper ROM,
Was bought for "Johnny Whizzkid" for Christmas, from DAD and MOM.

Over the years this mighty tool, was overtaken by the foe,
Technology has gripped us and the MIGGY is in a state of woe,
The A500, the A600 and the A1200 have come along,
With Big Box AMIGAs also to join the happy throng.

To try and make a come back, the new AMIGA has taken on
More up to date PC hardware, and they have called it the A 1,
But I have written this on my A1200, in what's known as YAM,
And to me, it was the best "export" to come from Uncle SAM.

Although we're twenty years further on, from the first A1000 made,
The seeds of MULTIMEDIA and digital convergence had been laid,
All of the competition cannot say they were to invent this word,
It was the A1000, attached to which this word was heard.

To finish off this ode to the "grandfather" of them all,
MULTIMEDIA and digital convergence could have taken a major fall,
If it wasn't for the foresight of the original design crew,
OF THE AMIGA A1000 AND THE FANTASTIC THINGS IT COULD DO...

Before I shipped it to its new owner, I fired it up and was amazed at how quickly it booted, how quickly programs launched, etc.
But... I have not played computer games for years, unless you count World of Goo..., and even with a multisync monitor, not really any good for the sort of things I need, so the need for space and wanting to see it in a good home finally won me over.

The sig between the asterisks is so cool that only REALLY COOL people can even see it!

I started out with a (shared with little brother) A600. Spent many, many
happy hours playing games, using Dpaint and some utills.

After a year or two, finally got sick of sharing, so saved up and bought an
origional A500 with only 512K (spent £35-40 on another 512K mem
expansion board!) from a friend at college.
I remember playing UFO enemy unknown (esp) well into the night.
Yep.....30-90 mins per computer turn......arrgghh.

I then bought a CD-32 from a friend back home with a shed load of games
(still have 'em). I might have to disagree with Mike here, as I had Rise of
the robots, & I think that was complete and utter $hit3!

Then I saved up again and bought my beloved A1200! (I actually missed
out on a trip to majorca with my friends from college for that!!).

But once again, I spent countless hours playing games, but by that time I'd
progressed to messing about with utills, more Dpaint IV and even some
Blitz Basic. Plus lots of PD and shareware software too.

Myself and a few friends even managed to make a daft little diskmag
with magnum pro?

Even bought another A1200 from a friend at my first workplace (as the first
A1200's diskdrive fell to pieces!) Infact, it's still up in the loft. And my
eventual plan is tower it up (once I get my own place, with enough space
to store all of my "precious" gear).

I recently threw out a good 500-1000 floppys, but I've kept all of my
originals, (I've still gotta finish Eye of the beholder 2, Indy & the fate of
Atlants, & again UFO enemy unknown!)

Fast boot times.
A dynamic RamDisk.
A bootable RAD:
A full OS on one floppy.
Instant drag`n`drop.
Still able to run any file from the trashcan before final delete.
Direct access to ALL of the HW, none of all this driver bo**ocks
that has to be updated continually because of bugs.
4096 colours, producing great results on TV sets in 1985.
Multimedia long before all this crap we have today.
Image digitisers that were cheap WRT PC stuff of the day.
Sound Samplers, Music generators, (D)Paint? packages
and many others that set the standard for today.

Sadly however it is a has been, but, I still love it and still
build and develop for it even now.

How many 24+ year old systems still have Python ported
to it, OH YES, the mighty AMIGA in all its guises.

It was so good that people still use it today as a main or
second machine.

There is a guy on one ML I am on that uses his A4000, as
his main server......